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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Мне не понравилась книга. Фантастика - это очень опасный, я считаю, жанр. Главное в этом жанре всегда помнить, что фантастика - это лишь средство для достижения цели, которой, имхо, должно быть раскрытие сущности человека в каких-то сложных ситуациях. В этой книге я этого не увидел. Ставлю 2 звезды. И то с натяжкой.
First written in 1947, this work is brilliant and transcends time. It would be as relevant today as when it was first written. Plenty of gripping moments as the protagonist takes us through his history of how he became an invisible man. The narrator Joe Morton's performance was outstanding as he captured the essence of the work.
“I do not know if all cops are poets"
There is always a book that sits on your "to read" list for years. And for whatever reason you don't get around to it, and when you finally do, you can't believe it took you so long to pick it up
This is that book for me.
"When I discover who I am, I'll be free"
Searching for his identity the unnamed protagonists finds himself in Harlem after being expelled from his College in the south.
He falls in with the "Brotherhood" where he is told that the individual doesn't matter, to always look at the bigger picture.
Slowly the protagonists realizes that he is not seen, he is that individual to be skipped over. He is a "cog in a machine"
He is invisible.
Those who manipulate him, oppress him, those who tell him what it is he needs, and what he needs to do to achieve it, these people do not see him.
He is a means to an end.
Invisible man is a book that although written in the early 1950's is still relevant.
Unfortunate ... inexcusable but true.
"His name was Clifton and he was black and they shot him"
Petronius haunts me still while reading this, which I think is a bad sign on my part and a sign of abstract detachment to my reading, in that the category of genre is predominating over the specificity of the text itself. Nevertheless I can't help but think along the tangent that there really are only basically two stories in this world: one, a liar/actor goes on a journey to discover their home/themself (The Odyssey) and two, someone stubbornly refuses to act/change their mind until the universe changes it for them (The Iliad)... Really these are the origins of comedy/tragedy, extroverted/introverted novelists (notice how easily Fielding/Richardson, for one, fit into this binary). The author's introduction gives a slight impression of being on the introverted/tragic side, in his indebtedness to Henry James, but if there is tragedy it is done by via negativa -- this is a standard picaresque/Menippean satire as it gets, in all its grotesque glory. And it fits the definition(s) of Menippean satire pretty exactly, especially in that it is a satire/protest against a pervasive and ubiquitous state of the world. Picaresque has its roots in The Odyssey ultimately, and the conclusion of 'Invisible Man', as a picaresque novel, is that the narrator is, like Odysseus, deracinated, Οὔτις. He finds refuge in the spectacular chapter 23 in the identity of Rinehart, who is the perfect picaro: ῠ̔ποκριτής par excellence, gambler, briber, lover, preacher, Reverend -- both rind and heart, Ellison puns. But ultimately even rejects this identity too: the Invisible Man, nameless, rejects even the freedom of the formless identity that which subsumes all possibility. The Invisible Man is a rather perfect symbol for the postmodern American -- but is the predicament of the formless, protean liar-actor picaro, of someone lacking identity, while exasperated clearly by the tensions of race, culture and history, a predicament that is so ubiquitous as to be necessarily existential? Or is Ellison marking that the postmodern really is a break -- while Odysseus returns to Ithaca, Stephen does find the uncreated features of his face in the mirror of Bloom, Ellison's Invisible Man has only invisibility, untethered sign without a referent?
Reading any summary or Cliff's Notes will miss 80% of the point(s) and the art. This stands up to reading, re-reading, and excerpting. Without hearing it as an audiobook I would have missed a lot. There are dozens of characters and the tone of the narrator shifts in every scene so I would have mis-understood half of what he meant.
If I can give one piece of advice, I'll say: it gets better. That's on you, because as the reader you have some work to do, deciding how you are going to take this in.
The early chapters are outrageous: the college dean asks him to chauffeur one of the school board trustees and things go really, really wrong. You have to be patient as you read it. Ellison is riffing profoundly on the themes of the book, even as he gives us some crazy, beautiful scenes.
Ellison writes like a musician plays the piano. A piano player has her left hand in dialogue with the right hand for the song. You can picture Ellison writing with both hands somehow. And yet, the writing is accessible, like a song you can play on the radio but that when you put on a good pair of headphones layers of production reveal themselves.
This is set in the south, and in New York, but it is also set in the existentialist literature of the 1940s. Ellison turns directly to the reader at more than one point and says This protagonist is you. What is life, what is your life? There's a major element of it that is universal.
I think people mistake it as being mainly about black people and America. I mean, it is, obviously, but people don't say it's main point is about gender. It is a giant reduction, like thinking Camus's The Plague is an African travelogue.
I could picture in print trying to read this too quickly through the first 100 pages. Go slowly. Put the book down. Call someone up and tell them about the story. It's like encountering Proust or Kirusawa. You need to honor the creator's art and adjust your expectation about what you thought Invisible Man was going to be.
It helps if you dissociate from the narrator's ups and downs - his ride was so wild it was distracting to my heart! (Me: "Don't go in the basement!" He goes in the basement.) Gotta just let him go there in every chapter. After I did that, the book opened itself up to me more. Don't worry too much - he pays for errors but in many ways he bounces back.
The narrator is sharing with you a gigantic fable, like Ishmael in Moby Dick or a character from mythology. You need to take it in like he's telling it to you around a campfire - it's not a tv camera, it's his yarn. It's a tale, not security camera footage. So instead of inhabiting the character's head (a la Shakespeare's Hamlet) you should ride along with him, allowing his flashlight to be more like the Narrator in Our Town, aimed at the folks in college, the folks after college. This nameless guy is Ishmael. He's going to eventually float away, soaking wet, as the Pequod goes down to the bottom of the sea.
Study guides mention these characters, all male, black, and powerful: Rhinehart, Ross the Exhorter, Bledsoe, and Tobit. Less discussed are five other characters Ellison throws into the mix who were really a pleasure to meet. The farther they are from power, the more heroic these characters feel. By the end of the book we have heard the clarity of Super-cargo, of the cart pushing junk man, of of the yam vendor, of his landlady Mary, and of Jim Trueblood the disgraced sharecropper, a very problematic character, all of them far from power, speaking truth, each worthy of their own book. All are like a chorus, commenting, seemingly from a distance, or a little like angels in a 1940s movie who sneak into a scene and people don't know they are an angel.
I shifted my opinion of several characters, which was a pleasant sensation. It added complexity and realism.
As you observe these complicated characters, ideally, you SEE them not as types (not as Invisible Men in other words).
The only other mid century epic I know is Grapes of Wrath. Ellison is more lively to read than John Steinbeck. His descriptive details are more elegant. His characters motivations are more complicated.
I will again recommend: get the audio version. I think mine was made in the 1990s, read by Joe Morgan as far as I remember. It is an easy hack for keeping the characters and shifting tone straight. By shifting tone I mean there are some chapters where the narrator is having fun with you, some where he himself is confused, and some where he is an pain. The actor makes this more accessible.
If I can give one piece of advice, I'll say: it gets better. That's on you, because as the reader you have some work to do, deciding how you are going to take this in.
The early chapters are outrageous: the college dean asks him to chauffeur one of the school board trustees and things go really, really wrong. You have to be patient as you read it. Ellison is riffing profoundly on the themes of the book, even as he gives us some crazy, beautiful scenes.
Ellison writes like a musician plays the piano. A piano player has her left hand in dialogue with the right hand for the song. You can picture Ellison writing with both hands somehow. And yet, the writing is accessible, like a song you can play on the radio but that when you put on a good pair of headphones layers of production reveal themselves.
This is set in the south, and in New York, but it is also set in the existentialist literature of the 1940s. Ellison turns directly to the reader at more than one point and says This protagonist is you. What is life, what is your life? There's a major element of it that is universal.
I think people mistake it as being mainly about black people and America. I mean, it is, obviously, but people don't say it's main point is about gender. It is a giant reduction, like thinking Camus's The Plague is an African travelogue.
I could picture in print trying to read this too quickly through the first 100 pages. Go slowly. Put the book down. Call someone up and tell them about the story. It's like encountering Proust or Kirusawa. You need to honor the creator's art and adjust your expectation about what you thought Invisible Man was going to be.
It helps if you dissociate from the narrator's ups and downs - his ride was so wild it was distracting to my heart! (Me: "Don't go in the basement!" He goes in the basement.) Gotta just let him go there in every chapter. After I did that, the book opened itself up to me more. Don't worry too much - he pays for errors but in many ways he bounces back.
The narrator is sharing with you a gigantic fable, like Ishmael in Moby Dick or a character from mythology. You need to take it in like he's telling it to you around a campfire - it's not a tv camera, it's his yarn. It's a tale, not security camera footage. So instead of inhabiting the character's head (a la Shakespeare's Hamlet) you should ride along with him, allowing his flashlight to be more like the Narrator in Our Town, aimed at the folks in college, the folks after college. This nameless guy is Ishmael. He's going to eventually float away, soaking wet, as the Pequod goes down to the bottom of the sea.
Study guides mention these characters, all male, black, and powerful: Rhinehart, Ross the Exhorter, Bledsoe, and Tobit. Less discussed are five other characters Ellison throws into the mix who were really a pleasure to meet. The farther they are from power, the more heroic these characters feel. By the end of the book we have heard the clarity of Super-cargo, of the cart pushing junk man, of of the yam vendor, of his landlady Mary, and of Jim Trueblood the disgraced sharecropper, a very problematic character, all of them far from power, speaking truth, each worthy of their own book. All are like a chorus, commenting, seemingly from a distance, or a little like angels in a 1940s movie who sneak into a scene and people don't know they are an angel.
I shifted my opinion of several characters, which was a pleasant sensation. It added complexity and realism.
As you observe these complicated characters, ideally, you SEE them not as types (not as Invisible Men in other words).
The only other mid century epic I know is Grapes of Wrath. Ellison is more lively to read than John Steinbeck. His descriptive details are more elegant. His characters motivations are more complicated.
I will again recommend: get the audio version. I think mine was made in the 1990s, read by Joe Morgan as far as I remember. It is an easy hack for keeping the characters and shifting tone straight. By shifting tone I mean there are some chapters where the narrator is having fun with you, some where he himself is confused, and some where he is an pain. The actor makes this more accessible.
challenging
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Police brutality
